


A Little More Time

by SilverShortyyy



Category: Carol (2015)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-26
Updated: 2018-05-26
Packaged: 2019-05-14 01:20:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,355
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14759870
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SilverShortyyy/pseuds/SilverShortyyy
Summary: The clock ticks on. Nine o’clock. Ten o’clock. Eleven. Twelve.Therese never shows, but even when Carol finds herself waking up to a lonely apartment with no real hope of Therese ever reentering her life, she waits. Every day.Therese never shows, because she tells herself she’ll get over it in the morning and that it’s because she was still in love.Oh, love.Oh, dear love.





	A Little More Time

_“I'm meeting some people at the, uh, Oak Room at 9:00, if you want to have dinner. If you change your mind, I-I think you'd like them.”_

_Well._ She thinks, as the night wears on and the clock ticks past twelve. _That’s that._

The last conversation of the evening had ended with her company bidding farewell at the sight of the clock.

“Well, would you look at the time!” He said. “My apologies, Ms. Aird. It was a pleasure to have kept your company for long, but I really must get going.”

“The missus might stay up late waiting, won’t she?”

“Oh, she always does. Sometimes I tell her she should go to bed for her own sake; it doesn’t do anyone good to stay up too late! But she insists.” His eyes had softened, and Carol thought of Therese. “And I dare say I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

_She might be running late. Maybe the party had ran past midnight._

But the minute hand passes three, and the second hand reminds her how young the night had been when this had started. How much younger she had been before she found herself going through what seemed like years and years of reckless passion at the sight of one shy woman from the counter of a toy store.

The minute hand moves, and she pushes herself out of her seat.

Maybe sometimes that’s just how it went. One falls in love with another who would not be as likely to jump off a cliff. Or, one falls in love with another, and despite kisses and a deep kind of intimacy, only one ever finds themself willing to trade everything they had ever had the fortune of having just to be with their beloved.

Carol tries to keep her head up, her smile in place.

As soon as the shadows swallow her, she lets her eyes cast down.

As soon as the locks click in place at her new apartment, she falls apart.

Oh how could she have made such a mistake? And yet she couldn’t think—let alone _say_ —such a thing. Therese wasn’t a mistake. If she were to be asked to do it all over again, she would. She would bear the excruciating pain of nearly losing Rindy over and over again, drown in the agony of peeling herself away from every inch of happiness she had ever had, suffocate in the feel of Therese around her, get asphyxiated by passion and desire and _love_ all at once, over and over again.

Clearly, (she wishes otherwise, but she needs to face the truth, sooner rather than later) Therese did not feel the same.

She touches her finger to her lips, and God help her. Because the only image that comes back to her is the softness of Therese’s kiss, the brightness in Therese’s smile, the flush in Therese’s cheeks and the slightest quirk up of the corner of Therese’s lips at the mere sight of Carol.

She wonders if anyone can hear her, with her back to the door like this.

And yet, she finds she’d feel this all over again if she had to.

* * *

Therese remembers how the feeling came back to her fingers at the mere touch of a letter from Carol. And how the colors and vibrance came back to her vision at the entrance of Carol into her line of sight. And how she suddenly felt the warmth she’d been missing since Carol left her that morning the moment Carol set a hand on Therese’s shoulder.

But, she thinks, it was going to end up like that anyway, no matter how anyone would look at it.

Her heart was still raw, fresh from the wounds inflicted on it that morning when she woke up to an empty bed and Abby bringing news of Carol’s leaving.

Of course she’d feel as if she had her first real drink of water after a long, long time of being left to wallow in thirst.

So she lets the clock chime by, the hands passing nine o’clock, then ten o’clock, then eleven o’clock. By eleven, she had come to want to leave the party, and so she made her way out, wondering if her feet would lead her to where Carol was waiting, to where her life could possibly change just as drastically as it had after she had sent those gray gloves to an address she had soon found to be the home of her lover.

Former home. Of her _ex_ -lover.

The more she phrased it that way, the easier it would get.

Wouldn’t it?

Therese finds that steering herself home felt easier, and though Carol was a magnet, Therese was no longer a stray piece of metal, easily gravitating toward every single passing magnetic field. No, Therese had more control now, and she wasn’t going to let herself get hurt again.

_But she said goodbye. Her letter’s still in my drawer._

Carol didn’t have to leave Therese to wake up like that.

Despite telling herself she’d go home, she found herself wandering through paths and walking on concrete and grass before she found herself back at her apartment.

Home.

And yet the word didn’t quite suit the place.

Therese didn’t want to think where the word ‘home’ led to; she didn’t want to hurt herself anymore than she’s already had to bear with today.

She knocks off her shoes and sheds her coat, and on her clock shows twelve o’clock.

Even if she went now, at a reckless command by what could be alcohol or loneliness, Carol would more likely be on the way to either her 4th Avenue apartment or possibly even be making her way up the steps of the New Jersey mansion. Therese would find no one waiting in The Oak Room, and not only would that be embarrassing, but it would also be painful.

She would hurt herself that way. She had hurt herself too many times since Carol had left her to make way for more.

So she finds her way to her bed, not caring to take a shower or change into nightclothes before wrapping herself in her blanket.

When she wakes up in the morning, this would all just be a bad dream.

But she wakes up to the brightness of dawn peeking through her windows and brushing over her eyelids, and though the morning is peaceful and silent, she finds herself unable to open her eyes from the burning pain where her chest was supposed to be, the pain threatening to smolder her throat despite the lack of fire anywhere around her.

She couldn’t even shed a tear.

* * *

The next few days that Carol wakes up, she’d find herself craving Abby’s company. So she calls Abby—who thankfully drives all the way over every single damn day—and spends the free days with her, telling Abby all the things she had never told Therese and all the things Carol knew inside of her to be true.

“I’d spend eternity in Hell for her, Abby.” The tears never seem to stop once Therese took center stage in her mind. “I thought I would only ever do something like that for Rindy but—“

And it hurts.

It hurts to live like this.

And every time Carol walks out of her apartment, she pretends to smile and find mirth in all the little things in life. She puts on a face, the face she has put on for so long, and works her job for a day before collapsing in her sorrow the moment her apartment door shuts closed.

It hurts. She’d think the mere pain would be enough to kill her within the month.

And yet, every morning, she wakes with the same optimism from the same heaven-sent dream.

Heaven-sent? Or god-damned? Because isn’t it torture to be fed all one’s best memories just to be awakened to the reality of all those memories to be gone?

But those dreams bring her an unnatural, almost miraculous strength and resilience. She finds herself able to get up and dress herself; the same sentence plays in her mind all throughout her early busyings.

 _Maybe today,_ she thinks. _Maybe today she’ll forgive me._

Some days, Carol succumbs to her darker thoughts and confesses to herself that maybe Therese will never come. Does such a sin leave room for forgiveness? And yet other days, she believes in love, in the love that Therese has for her, and in the love she has for Therese.

Other days, she wonders if Therese still loves her.

_“I love you.”_

The universe didn’t give her enough time to know at least that.

But at least Therese knows Carol’s true intentions. And maybe, somewhere in that matured, scarred soul, Therese would know that Carol would have done anything else if there was something else that could possibly have been done.

If Therese would find that reason enough to forgive Carol, then Carol would just have to be grateful.

Otherwise, Carol would have to learn to live with herself.

Therese could certainly do such.

“Why don’t they ever warn us how dangerous love can be?” Carol asks Abby, tea the only source of feeling in her long-since-numbed fingers. They felt numb to her since she began to think she’d never touch Therese again. “Why did no one ever send a warning that it could be so detrimental?”

“Maybe because no one knows until they’ve been destroyed.” Abby holds her when she cries, and God knows Carol would have given anything for Therese to have been holding her in those moments.

* * *

Work. Home. Work. Home. Work. Home. Work—

She didn’t know why she stood where she stood.

Therese simply remembers heading out after work. Maybe she’d gone and declined another ‘may-I-walk-you-home’ from Dannie. Maybe he hadn’t even bothered today. She doesn’t remember. She just remembers going to work, working, and heading out.

That’s pretty much how it was these days. Nothing but gray, dull routine.

(And a hollow echo in her chest, but she doesn’t like remembering nor dwelling on that fact.)

And yet, she did not end up in front of her apartment door.

Usually, she’d trudge through the day—the week, the month, probably the rest of her life—with no feeling of actually being awake. She’d move on function, like a gear in a machine. But no such thing seemed to be happening today. That is, from this point onward.

Not even her bed has looked this sharp since that evening at the Ritz—

She tells herself not to think about those memories out of habit. But, really, would it matter? She’s standing _here_ of all places.

Therese doesn’t even have to knock on the door.

Carol swings the door open, and Therese would not register that Carol had been living pretty much the same life if not for the sudden clarity in those eyes at the sight of Therese.

Carol’s lips are agape. Therese can see that Carol is threatening to teeter off the edge.

(How could she tell what this woman was feeling, even now? How, when all this time she had tried to pry herself away from that entire tryst?)

(Tryst? It was never a tryst. Calling it that would be an insult to its memory.)

Therese places her palm flat on the door and pushes on it ever so slightly.

Carol lets her in. Therese slowly walks past Carol.

Slowly, because the space between Carol and the door was quite small, but mostly because this would be Therese’s first time seeing the ‘new apartment’ Carol had been talking about.

Carol was right. It's big enough for two people.

And not just any two people.

_She bought this knowing who she wanted to live in it with._

Therese heard the lock click on the door. Heard the almost silent, shallow, quick breathing on Carol’s lips.

Carol’s voice sounds like a soft, hoarse croak.

“I miss you.”

When Therese turns around to face Carol, blond hair covers the once proud face, shadows just nearly hiding the tears almost spilling. Akin to wind sprites or wind spirits or whatever it was in those books and stories, Therese finds herself drawn, gravitating toward Carol without making a sound. Her palm touches the soft strands of Carol’s hair, and she feels more than hears the soft gasp Carol lets out at the contact.

It feels so good, after being starved for so long.

“I’m here now.”

Carol’s eyes are red, drowned, suffocated and asphyxiated and Therese just knows, _knows_ that there is nowhere else to be, not now, not ever again.

Therese tilts her head up, and her lips find Carol’s ever so sweetly. She touches their lips softly, and her fingers curl into soft strands of hair brighter than the sun and softer than snow.

Carol pushes back, and Therese feels tears spilling onto her cheeks.

Therese feels she can’t breath, and she almost laughs, and so she brings her other hand instead around Carol’s waist and pulls her closer, pulls Carol flush against herself. Carol feels scared, almost fearful, with hands and arms softly resting around Therese’s waist, not too tight for fear of breaking what she’s holding onto, not too loosely for fear that the moment would slip away.

_I’m here now._

Therese tightens her hold and pushes deeper into the kiss.

To her delight, Carol does the same.

When they pull apart, Therese rests her back on the door while Carol rests her forehead on Therese’s. Therese feels more than sees both their lips split in a bigger smile than either of them have genuinely felt in weeks, and she hopes that from this point on, they won’t have to go so long without smiling in this raw, real way.

_Only one way to lock that deal in._

“I love you.”

Carol bites her lip down. Therese bets Carol’s trying to keep her cheeks from stretching too far up.

“And _I_ love _you_.”

The next time they press their lips together, they both know the only things missing are a pair of rings and spoken vows.


End file.
